A highlight on the Ancient American Culture and History

Christopher Columbus landed in Bahamas with a group of people and discovered America. He came from Asia through the seas and reached a land bridge, which is the present day Alaska about 12000 years ago. The immigrants slowly settled in parts of south and the east. An interesting fact is that by 15th century, the European adventurers who were about 50 million in population had already settled in Americas. Out of these 10 million lived in the areas that would have become the United States. This led to a diverse in various cultures, coming and staying in different parts of the country. It led to have 10 split cultures namely the Arctic, the Subarctic, the Northeast, the Southeast, the Plains, the Southwest, the Great Basin, California, the Northwest Coast and the Plateau.

The Arctic is a cold, flat, tree less region which is near the Arctic region. Today it has different places like Alaska, Canada and Green land. Initially two groups the Inuit and the Aleut lived in this region. Both the groups spoke a language that was a dialect of the Eskimos. The Inuit stayed in the northern part of the region. Since this area was not hospitable, they moved to different regions according to the seasons suitable to the climate. The Aleuts lived in the southern part which were mainly the coastal region and mainly did fishing. Both the groups built dome-shaped houses made of sod or timber. They used seal and otter skins to make warm, weatherproof clothing, aerodynamic dogsleds and long, open fishing boats.

The subarctic was composed of swampy, piney forest and waterlogged tundra, stretched across much of inland Alaska and Canada. The transportation was difficult in this region due to continuous snowfall in this region. Toboggans, snowshoes and lightweight canoes were the primary means of transport in this region. As life was hard in this region, these people were not able to settle there permanently at that point of time. They lived in small groups, built tents to stay and stayed underground during the winters. Slowly these people developed and started making fur instead of hunting in the 17th and 18th century.

The Southeast area was located to the north of Gulf of Mexico and to the south of the North East. This land was a humid, fertile and agricultural land. The farmers living in this area cultivated crops like maize, beans, tobacco, and sunflower. The five most familiar tribes who lived in this area are the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole. They all spoke a variant of Muskogee language.

The region between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, from present-day Canada to the Gulf of Mexico was the plains culture area. The people in this area spoke languages like the Siouan, Algonquian, Caddoan, Uto-Aztecan and Athabasca. They were relatively settled lived on hunting and farming. These people started moving to different places and became nomadic in culture after they came into contact with the European and the Spanish in the 18th century. Groups like the Crow, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Comanche and Arapaho used horses to pursue great herds of buffalo across the prairie. These people were generally hunters and they stayed in cone-shaped teepee and carried a bison skin to every place they went.

The people in the southwest were generally farmers and were called in different names like the Hopi, the Zuni, the Yaqui and the Yuma. They grew crops like corn, beans and squash. This area today belongs to the present day Arizona and New Mexico. These people built multistory dwellings that looked like apartments.

Today, many entertainment programs display the ancient cultures from different parts of the world. I was able to watch some of these programs featuring on my Dish TV. Another program that I watched depicted the ancient Egyptian civilization.

Stuart Owens - About Author:Stuart is a freelance writer who generally likes to write topics based on agriculture and about entertainment. He is inspired after watching a documentary about the ancient American culture on his Dish T and wants to highlight some of them.